With less than two months left in the current contract for University of RI President David Dooley, URI’s new Board of Trustees is pursuing negotiations with Dooley for what may be a temporary contract extension.
Dooley’s current three-year contact, which expires July 1, was listed as a discussion item for a closed executive session during the URI Board of Trustees’ meeting last Friday.
URI remains guarded about Dooley’s future plans.
“Margo Cook, URI board chair, and President Dooley are negotiating and this remains a personnel matter,” Dawn Bergantino, a URI spokeswoman, said in a statement. “The president’s plans will be shared at the appropriate time.”
The Public’s Radio reported in January on the uncertainty over whether Dooley would stay on at URI, Rhode Island’s flagship university, after the end of his current contract.
In the time since, the COVID-19 pandemic has closed college campuses across the and sparked uncertainty about resuming conventional campus life. This situation has complicated the outlook for universities looking to recruit a new president.
Considering that, a temporary extension for Dooley to lead the university through the next year or two would not come as a surprise.
In July 2009, Dooley, who was 56 at the time, became URI’s 11th president. His most recent three-year contract came in 2017. The university has denied requests for an interview with Dooley.
Dooley worked for 16 years at Montana State University, rising to the post of provost before coming to URI. He and his wife are known to have a strong affinity for Montana.
The URI president was initially slated to make his future intentions known by January 1 of this year, but that was delayed due to the creation of the university’s new board of trustees.
As The Public’s Radio reported earlier this year, Dooley’s URI profile credits him with having “reshaped the University’s strategic direction, creating a set of broadly defined goals critical to the University’s evolution.” More details on that are outlined in a recent report.
Dooley championed the concept of creating a governance structure for URI independent from the Rhode Island Council on Postsecondary Education, a concept opposed by Gov. Gina Raimondo.
The new 17-member URI Board of Trustees has met twice, both times virtually, since its members were nominated by Raimondo and confirmed by the state Senate earlier this year.
The board is chaired by Margo L. Cook, a URI finance grad, who has led a large Chicago-based investment company.
Raimondo spokesman Josh Block said the governor has no particular expectation regarding Dooley’s future at URI.
“President Dooley has done a fantastic job leading a world-class institution, and he has been clear that he will continue to steer URI through this current crisis,” Block said. “Whether he intends to stay on beyond that is a decision for him and the URI Board to make.”
Ian Donnis can be reached at idonnis (at) ripr (dot) org
